Spanish police escort caravan of truckers in protest

MADRID (AP) — More than 23,000 Spanish police officers on patrols and helicopters escorted truck caravans along the country's highways and stopped protesters on Friday, while authorities tried to keep supply chains running amid a trucker strike over the high prices of the gasoline and other complaints.

Protesters threw burning tires on a highway in northwestern Spain during the night, national media reported. The police have made at least two arrests.

Police units were deployed on Friday at crossings and logistics centers and escorted the caravans, including one of trucks carrying gas and another, carrying 30 vehicles, which was on its way to collect animal fodder, state news agency EFE reported.

While some sectors reported supply problems on the fifth day of the demonstration, the government reiterated its claims that supporters of the far right are the ones who are inciting the protest called by a group of mostly independent truckers.

Finance Minister María Jesús Montero told reporters that the protest represents “a boycott in which the far-right takes advantage of it to prevent food products and goods from reaching the points of supply and distribution.”

The truck drivers refused to have links with the far right. In a statement released Thursday night on their website, they said that the government “is trying to criminalize and hang ideological labels on a sector that only seeks to be able to make a living from its work and that feels marginalized and despised by its rulers.”

The Platform for the Defense of the Transport Sector, which called for the protest, noted that it was created spontaneously in 2008. It was created by six truck drivers from Galicia, a region in northwestern Spain, who were not affiliated with national trucker associations, reports its website.

The group is not affiliated with national carrier associations, nor with road transport companies, and does not sit at the sector negotiating table with the government. The group did not immediately respond to a question about the number of members it has. Most Spanish truck drivers are still working.

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John Leicester in Paris contributed to this firm.